Electronic systems demand increasingly higher performance in increasingly smaller space and at an increasingly smaller cost. The current trend in electronic systems is to reduce the overall size, cost and complexity of components to meet these requirements. Heat sinks are commonly used in such electronic systems to dissipate heat from a heat-generating component, such as an ASIC device. The heat transfer capability of heat sinks, however, depends upon their size, substantially limiting effective reduction of their size.
Card guides are commonly used to carry and support an edge of a circuit card to align it with a connector and/or to maintain spacing from other components of an electronic system, for example. Exemplary card guides have sufficient structural strength to gather, guide, and/or retain a circuit card. This structural requirement can substantially limit effective size reduction of the card guide.